One lovely winter afternoon, I was driving to work on 700 East. There was a police vehicle behind, and he had been there for quite a while. I was going the allotted 45 mph speed limit. Meanwhile, there were cars with older people in them passing me left and right. Did the police officer behind me pass me and pull any of them over when they were clearly speeding? Nope, he stayed right behind me for another couple of blocks.
When the realization that I was not going to do anything illegal finally occurred, he passed me and turned at the next light. Why weren't the people who kept speeding passed me ever pulled over? Why did I get followed for so long when I wasn't doing anything wrong? Why? Because I am a teenager and teenagers are often viewed as being more devious and dangerous than adults.
Teenage life isn't easy. Teenagers are constantly worrying about friends, parents and peer pressure, all the while trying to succeed at school and, for some of us, hold down a job. We do all this with raging hormones and emotions that fluctuate more often than the stock market. It's tough, and teens receive a lot of criticism for a lot of things. Yes, there are things that teenagers do that aren't right.
It is really easy to get in a car with a group of friends and not realize how fast you are going. I have learned that from experience. It was not an easy lesson to learn, and I have paid for it. Seriously, it has cost me $147.
The first time I got pulled over, I shouldn't have. I wasn't speeding, I know I wasn't speeding, and the three other people in my car know I wasn't speeding. The officer who stopped me that night in March followed me for five blocks and then turned on his lights when I tried to change lanes because a stopped car was blocking my lane of traffic.
My understanding was that if people are caught speeding, they are immediately to be pulled over, not tailed for blocks. So why didn't I get stopped when the officer supposedly clocked me speeding? It's a simple concept, I wasn't the one speeding, but whoever was speeding got away, and I was the scapegoat.
Racial profiling is a big issue with law enforcement agencies and the public today. Case after case is presented in courts all over America and in the news media. The issue of age profiling had never come up. Why not? It goes on everyday, everywhere. Teenagers are stopped by police because of their age, whether or not they are doing anything wrong.
A friend of mine told me about an experience he once had with age profiling. His older brother was driving him to and from an acting class. The brother had only had his license for 10 days. On their way home one day, they got pulled over. They weren't speeding and hadn't done anything illegal.
The officer asked how old my friend's brother was and when he said he was 16, the officer didn't believe him, until he finally asked for his license and saw that he was indeed 16 and had a license. The officer reluctantly gave back the license and told him to slow down. He wasn't issued a ticket or a warning because he wasn't doing anything wrong and shouldn't have been pulled over.
Schools teach students that they are the wave of the future. They will control the next 30 years. It is all them; they will make a difference. It is time to make a difference. Teenagers get little of the respect they deserve. A few of us screw up and it gives the rest of us a bad name. All suspicions lie on us, we are up to no good all of the time, constantly doing drugs, drinking and being promiscuous, and every time we get into a car we are being so illegal that we must be stopped! Dispatch all units, the high school basketball game has just ended and hundreds of teenagers need to be pulled over!
Whether you're a teenager driving to a nearby 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp, meeting friends in Wendy's parking lot or taking your little brother to golf lessons, you are under suspicion for driving while young, therefore rendering you a road hazard. So make sure you put your blinker on three seconds before you are going to turn, use it when you make a lane change, don't turn the stereo up and obey the speed limit.
There are a lot of irresponsible drivers out there and most of them have finished high school.
Sarah Jackman is a senior at Cottonwood High School.